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Guest Column| Implications of NGT stay on Punjab’s farmhouse policy
A pause in the Shivalik-Kandi belt forces Punjab to confront a deeper question: How to govern the periphery without either choking lawful land use or legitimising sprawl.
The National Green Tribunal’s interim stay on Punjab’s Green Habitat farmhouse policy until February 4 has turned a planning measure into a wider test of governance. Supporters see the policy as an attempt to bring order to a long-messy landscape; critics fear it could become a gateway to regularising elite sprawl in an eco-fragile belt. The truth sits uncomfortably in between, which is precisely why the issue has become a dilemma for the Punjab government.
Punjab’s difficulty is not new: It has never successfully policed the periphery of Chandigarh through democratic policy alone. The Nayagaon-Kansal-Karoran belt remains a reminder of what happens when development mushrooms without an overarching plan, virtually at the Capitol Complex’s doorstep. Earlier, Zirakpur exposed another version of the same story, urban growth racing ahead of coordinated infrastructure and land-use discipline. When enforcement is intermittent and planning is reactive, the vacuum is filled by speculation, piecemeal construction and, too often, influence.
In that context, Punjab’s stated objective to impose a rule-bound framework where unregulated growth has thrived cannot be dismissed as inherently unreasonable. If construction is happening anyway, the state’s argument goes, it is better to regulate transparently than to allow a lawless grey zone to expand.
The state’s defence rests on a central claim: De-listed PLPA land is not “forest land” under any settled definition, notification, government order, or official record. If that is correct, an obvious common-sense question follows: Once land is de-listed from the colonial-era Punjab Land Preservation Act (PLPA), 1900, should it be subjected to more onerous restrictions than other non-forest land?
A democratic instinct leans towards parity. Landholders will ask why de-listing should change little in practice if the law has, in effect, stepped back. At the same time, ecological sensitivity is a fact of geography, not merely a legal label. Shivalik slopes, seasonal rivulets, erosion risks and groundwater recharge zones do not disappear because a statute no longer applies.
Farmhouse triggers alarm
Much of the anxiety lies in what “farmhouse” can become. A modest dwelling linked to cultivation is one thing; sprawling leisure estates — with boundary walls, paved surfaces, borewells and private infrastructure — are another. Critics worry that a regularisation-driven regime can quietly convert the countryside into a gated, quasi-urban mosaic. The reported speculative churn after notification, especially around Chandigarh’s edge, has only sharpened these suspicions.
Equally, the state argues that the alternative, doing nothing, simply entrenches unplanned growth, making environmental harm harder to reverse and governance harder to defend.
The most practical way out is to avoid treating this as a binary choice between “development” and “environment”. Punjab already has a statutory toolkit to regulate non-forest land: The Punjab Regional Town Planning and Development Act, 1995, and the Punjab New Capital (Periphery) Control Act, 1952. A credible policy — whether this one survives or returns in a revised form — must lean hard on these planning filters: Access widths, drainage and slope stability, water extraction norms, waste management, density limits, and enforcement capacity that is visible on the ground, not assumed on paper.
Quick judicial outcome
With the stay in force, Punjab will seek vacation or modification before the NGT and defend its framework as lawful and environmentally responsible. That battle will also be a litmus test for the office of the advocate general, Punjab, which has recently handled politically sensitive matters with notable success. Meanwhile, a parallel challenge before the Punjab and Haryana high court is reportedly being contemplated.
What Punjab needs most is speed and finality. Prolonged legal limbo rewards speculation, fuels rumour, and encourages the worst habit of all — build first, litigate later. A prompt, reasoned outcome will either validate a stricter, better-designed regulatory framework or compel the state to rethink it altogether. Either result is preferable to drift.
For Punjab, the larger lesson is unavoidable: The periphery cannot be governed through ad hoc policing. It requires consistent planning, credible enforcement and rules that treat de-listed land fairly, without pretending that ecological fragility can be regulated away by labels alone. kbs.sidhu@gmail.com
The writer is a retired Punjab IAS officer. Views expressed are personal.
